OTTAWA, September 11, 2002 (LSN.ca) – The Senate Committee which issued a report approving legalizing marijuana use has come under fire for foul play during hearings on the subject. “Anyone who believes the Senate’s Report on Illegal Drugs is an impartial analysis of the issue, must also believe in leprechauns and fairies,” says Gwen Landolt, National Vice President of REAL Women of Canada.
Landolt presented several facts on the hearings that reveal a tainted procedure: -Although the Committee is presented as being comprised of nine Senators, in fact, only Conservative Senator Pierre Claude Nolin and his sidekick and deputy chairman, Senator Colin Kenny actually showed up for the Committee Hearings. -Of the witnesses appearing before the Committee, 80% supported liberal laws on marijuana. These witnesses included drug “experts” from Switzerland and the Netherlands (both countries have very liberal drug laws), but NO drug experts from Sweden which has tough and successful anti-drug laws. Representatives were also invited by the Committee from a number of pro-marijuana organizations in Canada. Also invited were approximately 87 “individuals”, all of whom are marijuana users.
– The two Senators heard their last witnesses on June 7, 2002. Yet they produced a four-volume, 600-page report, researched, written, translated into the two official languages, and printed and bound in less than three months. It is obvious that the report was a work-in-progress during the hearings with a pre-determined conclusion.
The Committee’s Report was extreme. It recommended total access to marijuana use for those 16 years and older, and also that Canada should “temporarily withdraw from the UN Convention and Treaties prohibiting cannabis use until the international community accedes to Canada’s request to amend them.”“As if the 190 member nations comprising the UN (most of which have ratified the conventions and treaties on drugs) have got it all wrong and await Canada’s ‘leadership’ on the matter!” said Ms. Landolt. In effect the Special Senate Committee on Illegal Drugs together with the Report of the House of Commons Special Committee on the Non-Medical Use of drugs, which is to be tabled in November, is a set up for a one-two punch “to close off debate and accept the proposed outrageous changes in our drug laws. Who will gain from these changes? Certainly not Canadian society and especially not our children.”